The 2024 Radar Challenge took place at the IEEE Radar Conference in Denver, CO, and was organized by the AESS Radar System Panel with the invaluable support of Analog Devices and MathWorks.
With the Challenge, different teams had the opportunity to practice and showcase their skills with state-of-the-art radar hardware, specifically the Phaser 10 GHz Phased Array Radar platform from Analog Devices. This is a low-cost, simplified phased array radar that allows real beamforming hardware to be used for education, research activities, and even software development in MATLAB.
Within the Challenge, each team of participants was asked to submit a proposed plan of activities in Fall 2023, and 10 teams were selected to receive one Phaser kit and support from the Analog Devices and MathWorks teams to develop their proposal further. Eventually, seven teams made it to the final stage and came to the Radar Conference to showcase their work with a public presentation and Q&A session.
2024 Teams
A panel of judges scored the work of the seven teams based on criteria such as creativity, technical depth, clarity, and completeness of the presented material.
The three top teams were:
1st Place: Nicole Pham and Dylan Wesen, University of Washington, for their work on ISAR imaging for navigation surveillance
2nd Place: Min-Duan Tzeng, Hsiu-Wei Hsu, Shin Yi Low, and Wei-Chun Hwang, University of Oklahoma, for their work on radar-based tomography
3rd Place: Sean J. Kearney, Josh Haeker, Emily Curl) from the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa for their work on small drone surveillance and classification.
It is important to emphasize that all teams received the Phaser kits just before Christmas, so the technical work they showed was performed over only a few months. Well done therefore to all the groups for their impressive performance!
The next edition of the Challenge will take place at the 2025 IEEE Radar Conference in Krakow, Poland in October 2025.
